Deciding on the best digital painting software

I am not an experienced digital painting artist.  This is an area I wanted to explore for the longest time but it is only now that I have had the courage to actually embark on it.  

I have purchased my hardware already for digital painting - a WACOM Cintiq 16, which I bought two years ago but never really did anything substantial on it.  I purchased a painting software at that time called Paintstorm and have started some lessons from Udemy to help me navigate the app.  But after a few lessons,  boredom set in and other priorities ruled and so I shelved this project for some time.

But the itch to paint came back.  For over a year now, I have been impressed by the paintings produced by a former high school classmate, and I convinced myself that I can do something like that.  

I have noticed that a lot of painting (not digital) courses are available and even finding the right one for me was a struggle.  Anyway I later decided that I don't really have enough room in the apartment for painting canvasses, paints and other tools. So I decided to forget about using actual paints and canvasses and turn back to digital art.

Recently, I had to retire my old laptop because of relentless problems accumulated over 12 years or so, including constantly failing wifi connection despite an NBN connection.  In the course of changing over to a new laptop, I re-installed a lot of my applications.  I thought this would be a good time also to go back to my ambition of digital painting.

The first thing I did:  I bought a stand for the WACOM Cintiq 16. Now that I am serious about this path, I really need this.  I then set up my system to have 3 screens:  laptop screen, Cintiq screen connected via HDMI, and another VGA monitor. 

Now is the time to select digital painting software - the best available at this time.  I had tried Paintstorm before but was never truly impressed.  From various reviews however of software available, I came across REBELLE 5.  I became impressed by the features including controls like:  Blend - Blend colors together; Wet - Add water on the paper; Dry - Remove water from the paper; Blow - Blow wet colors; Tilt - Tilt the paper to flow the colors; Wet Canvas - Make the whole canvas a little wet; Dry Canvas - Dry the canvas.

I downloaded the Demo Version and was quite impressed by Watercolor where I could make the paint bleed like real watercolor. One of the reviews stated that "Rebelle 5 boasts one of the best paint and liquid simulations available. It offers physical color mixing based on real world, traditional pigments". I have compared Rebelle 5 with reviews of other software like Affinity Designer, Clip Studio Paint.  

And I have made my decision.  With no real experience in creating a digital painting and without knowing much about navigating the software I was able to produce this piece I called "BRANCHES" in 20 minutes.  

There are two versions of Rebelle:  Rebelle 5 and Rebelle 5 Pro.  If you do not intend to make printed versions, Rebelle 5 will be sufficient.  One of the benefits of the Pro version is NanoPixel Technology which allows you to export 16x larger artworks with sharp details.

I hope you make the right decision too.  For more information about Rebelle 5, go to https://www.escapemotions.com/products/rebelle/about